Article source: ConstructConnect

The U.S. total jobs increase in October was +531,000 according to the latest Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). A gain of more than half a million would have been met with cheering in any month prior to the pandemic. And it’s better than September’s +312,000 and August’s +483,000. But it still leaves total employment in the U.S. significantly below where it was in February 2020, just before COVID-19 touched down.

The total number of U.S. jobs at present is 148.3 million. Twenty months ago, in February 2020, the total number of jobs in the nation was 152.5 million. The difference is a remaining shortfall of -4.2 million positions.

The all-jobs claw-back ratio (i.e., the number-of-jobs rebound since April 2020 compared with the big number-of-jobs drop from February to April 2020) is now 81.2%. The jobs recovery ratio in the services sector is better at 84.9%.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

U.S. housing starts, as an average of the seasonally adjusted and annualized (SAAR) monthly figures to date in 2021, have been ahead by almost a fifth (+18.5%) compared with the same January-to-September period of 2020.

Versus the first three quarters of 2019, they’ve been even more elevated, +26.8%, or up by a quarter.

In the latest individual month, though, U.S. residential groundbreakings of 251,000 units were +7.4% year over year, but -1.6% month to month.

Graph 1 makes clear that while monthly U.S. homebuilding starts have been relatively strong throughout this year so far, they have also flattened. The level of starts has shown little variability from month to month, most often resting just under 1.6 million units.

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